FFG has what appears to be a press release on their site, which has me curious...

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/article-jinteki.html

Now, I tried to do some digging, googling Jinteki Corporation but their site is down, or at least I can't access it from my location.

Anyone know what the heck this Jinteki Corporation is? I don't think it's real, but it certainly is mysterious...

Yeah down from my end too.

The gut-feel I got from the article was that Jinteki Corporation were more of a component manufacturer (possibly miniatures or cards given the nature of FFG's titles) than a publishing company...but I could be wrong.

It would seem odd to announce a partnership of that kind as it usually isn't the done thing but perhaps this will become more common as companies look to secure cash flow lines (and financial credibility) in these economic times.

No... I get the feeling that Jinteki is not a real corporation... I'm guessing it is some sort of fictional company... But I've not heard of it...

I agree with Gabe. I assumed it was a fictional company for some new game they were releasing.

Check it out, y'all!

http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=26513

Seems to be some sort of Alternate Reality Game involved, dating back to GenCon in August. Pretty cryptic still.

Are you suggesting that this could in fact be a breadcrumb trail that leads to a new pre-Christmas release?

Could FFG truly be that diabolical?!

It's definitely not real. It seems to be some sort of viral marketing thing that's been going on since at least as far back as GenCon. Not too much information yet. Here's afew hits I got from the site and forums...

Jinteki Corporation headquarters are located in beautiful New Angeles, home of the celebrated Beanstalk. Branch offices and research and development laboratories are located in Osaka, Japan and Noctis Labyrinth on Mars.

Jinteki is devoted to ending our current age of scarcity and bringing about a new age of plenty, in which humankind’s labors become labors of the mind and the spirit.

If you’re reading this, I’m dead. I saw something Jinteki didn’t want anyone to see. What you’re reading now is my insurance. If something happens to me, I’ve rigged some computer programs to release my data files to the net. I can’t do too much at once, or IS will notice and purge the system. If you want to expose Jinteki for the murdering scum they are, then keep your head down and gather up the data I’ve left behind. Don’t be too obvious, or Jinteki will catch on and shut you down. I’ve encrypted everything to try and obscure the trail a bit more, but if you talk to anyone else about this, do it on the Phantom forum. I’ve rigged it to be invisible to Jinteki. For the next step, I’m going to have my Secretary agent vet you out and see if you’re okay, so you’ll need to enter your contact email below. If you check out, you’ll hear from me again on the 3rd of September.

From: Kyle Saves (KYLEDSL) 26 Aug 2:30
To: Angela (FERIWICCAN) unread 9 of 9
7.9 In reply to 7.8
I am ready to evolve.

Hmmmm... this site seems to be working...

Ok getting it now.

Wouldn't it be cool though if our hobby reached a point where games were truly promoted through mysterious clues and paper trails (requiring their own departments) and Geeks with way too much time on their hands would dedicate countless hours to meeting shady characters in diners and so forth as they aim to unravel the mystery. In essence it would be a game within itself - a real life role-playing game of sorts.

Cool yes...but I must get of the illicit drugs.

No, Neil. I wholeheartedly agree. I love the viral stuff.

Mmm...viral. Not a big fan of the itchy stuff though.

The image tooltip is "Battlelore"... but battlelore is not really a sci-fi setting... What is going on?

img src="images/jinteki-logo-green.jpg" alt="BattleLore" hspace="10" vspace="10" border="0" title="BattleLore"

[]s
Edson

Sounds like copy and paste gone wrong.

And yeah, there was a jintekicorp.com (and don't bother the poor jinteki.com guy, no connection there) and it seemed to be the start of an ARG. Dunno why it's down now.

There's one odd thing in FFG's press release; there's no company info (I assume as the law requires) at the end of the press release. Therefore, I am suspicious that this is indeed a game ad.

If you look at the google cached version of jintekicorp.com, you get the following :

There has been a security breach.
Our systems will be available again once they have been secured and the damage repaired.
All concerns can be addressed to our webmaster at kutada@jintekicorp.com

Did anyone try e-mailing kutada@jintekicorp.com ?

EDIT : I decided to play myself, and wrote an e-mail to this address.
I'll update if I get any answer (although I don't think I should expect one before Monday).

This was my first thought too. It's also a very prominent (almost excessive) logo on the page. Sounds like a marketing campaign to me. And I don't mind it one bit

There have been rumours of the Science Fiction Command & Colours game being in development... I'm probably just setting myself up for disappointment though. Still I'll be interested to see where this goes. At least it's a Christmas release.

I am going out on a limb here right now and state that this is probably related to the Dune license that FFG has. We all know that the new game will not be based within the Dune universe, but this could possibly be it. Like I said, I have no inside information about this, it is simply a hunch.

Chris, The new Dune-ish game should be set in the Twilight Imperium universe, but I agree that it might be it.

Hmmm... I just noticed this link on FFGs homepage:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/jinteki-securityfeed.html

More jinteki shenanigans...

There's also a related rant :

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/rants.html

There is definitely a face in the smoke.

There seems to be either a 10 or and indication of some sort of binary code in the rant. Could be interesting.

The "camera" page ( http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/jinteki-securityfeed.html) now shows a code.
Move all the letters in the code like this :

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
hijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefg

and you get :
www.fantasyflightgames.com/jintekiprivate/suspect.html

but there's nothing there...

You missed the hyphen.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/jinteki-private/suspect.html